Father Coughlin

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Has the Church ever repudiated Father Charles Edward Coughlin? Is there an official or unofficial view of him? Do any Catholics defend him? Just curious.
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The book that Jerusha linked to from Amazon called “Radio Priest” is an excellent scholarly treatment of Fr. Coughlin, but uses him more as a backdrop to chronicle the rise of far right movements in the U.S. throughout the 1930s and 1940s. So it’s not strictly about him, but it does spend a lot of time on him.

Fr. Coughlin is responsible for building the Shrine to the Little Flower in Detroit, MI, the first church in North America named after St. Therese of Lisieux. He had a wildly successful radio program that was syndicated and drew in hundreds of thousands of listeners weekly. His economic talks were widely listened to and things were wrote were distributed far and wide. I think though by the time he was threatened with excommunication his star was fading rather fast. By the time America entered the war any talk that even hinted at Fascist or Nazi leanings was frowned upon, plus his donations and syndication deals were drying up or had disappeared by then. He remained as custodian of the Shrine until the mid-1960s and died in 1979, I believe.

He was at one time a very popular Catholic speaker and wisely used radio and mass media to get his message out. In some ways he was really ahead of his time. As the warnings started to come from his bishop and superiors and as he grew more controversial it became more difficult to keep him on the air. He became too polarizing. He eventually lost his influence, but remained a priest his entire life.

ChadS
 
ChadS said:
The book that Jerusha linked to from Amazon called “Radio Priest” is an excellent scholarly treatment of Fr. Coughlin, but uses him more as a backdrop to chronicle the rise of far right movements in the U.S. throughout the 1930s and 1940s. So it’s not strictly about him, but it does spend a lot of time on him.

Fr. Coughlin is responsible for building the Shrine to the Little Flower in Detroit, MI, the first church in North America named after St. Therese of Lisieux. He had a wildly successful radio program that was syndicated and drew in hundreds of thousands of listeners weekly. His economic talks were widely listened to and things were wrote were distributed far and wide. I think though by the time he was threatened with excommunication his star was fading rather fast. By the time America entered the war any talk that even hinted at Fascist or Nazi leanings was frowned upon, plus his donations and syndication deals were drying up or had disappeared by then. He remained as custodian of the Shrine until the mid-1960s and died in 1979, I believe.

He was at one time a very popular Catholic speaker and wisely used radio and mass media to get his message out. In some ways he was really ahead of his time. As the warnings started to come from his bishop and superiors and as he grew more controversial it became more difficult to keep him on the air. He became too polarizing. He eventually lost his influence, but remained a priest his entire life.

ChadS
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A pretty sanitized view, Chad.

Fr. Coughlin was overtly anti-Semitic at a time when the Holocaust was in full swing and Jews, (and others: Gypsies, homosexuals, “defectives” , Poles, Catholics, and anyone else disagreeing with the Nazi regime) were being destroyed by the millions. He did the Catholic Church in the US a great deal of harm.

Coughlin’s bishop was very wise to threaten to “de-frock” him.
 
strgzr99 said:
A pretty sanitized view, Chad.

Fr. Coughlin was overtly anti-Semitic at a time when the Holocaust was in full swing and Jews, (and others: Gypsies, homosexuals, “defectives” , Poles, Catholics, and anyone else disagreeing with the Nazi regime) were being destroyed by the millions. He did the Catholic Church in the US a great deal of harm.

Coughlin’s bishop was very wise to threaten to “de-frock” him.
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I wasn’t trying to defend him, you are right he had an intense dislike of Jews throughout his entire life and his speeches included codewords to make sure people knew he was speaking of Jews without actually mentioning them.

I’m not sure he was defrocked though. I do believe he remained a priest his entire life and was assigned to the Shrine until he retired.

ChadS
 
None of this really addresses whether the Church officially rebuked and repudiated his statements. His threatened defrocking might have been because of a perceived excessive involvement in politics. I believe Bishop Romero and the liberation theology movement may have also been criticized for the same reason. But that is not the same as making an official statement criticizing Couglin’s antisemitism. Which I would hope was also done.
 
mcteague said:
None of this really addresses whether the Church officially rebuked and repudiated his statements. His threatened defrocking might have been because of a perceived excessive involvement in politics. I believe Bishop Romero and the liberation theology movement may have also been criticized for the same reason. But that is not the same as making an official statement criticizing Couglin’s antisemitism. Which I would hope was also done.
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There appears to be a good piece on Coughlin on wikipedia, to which I refer anyone interested. I quote the following excerpts:
  1. Earl Alfred Boyea, Jr. in 1995 showed that the Catholic Church did not approve of Coughlin. The Vatican, the Apostolic Delegation in Washington, D.C., and the archbishop of Cincinnati all wanted him silenced. They recognized that only Coughlin’s superior, Detroit Archbishop Michael Gallagher, had the canonical authority to curb him, but Gallagher supported the “Radio Priest”. Due to Gallagher’s autonomy and the prospect of Coughlin leading a schism, the Roman Catholic leadership did nothing.[25]
and, a few paragraphs later,
  1. On May 1, 1942, the Archbishop of Detroit, Most Rev. Edward Mooney, ordered Coughlin to stop his political activities and confine himself to his duties as a parish priest, warning that he would be defrocked if he refused. Coughlin complied and remained the pastor of the Shrine of the Little Flower until retiring in 1966.
this was, of course, after Pearl Harbor. Coughlin was an isolationist and the tide had turned away from him.

The article ways that he was overtly anti-Semitic and was supported by continuing marches opposing the acceptance of Jews in the US.

so the church did eventually, thru a change in the archbishop of Detroit, take action against him by forcing him to stop broadcasting and taking part in political activities, with the threat of defrocking him if he did not obey. He complied, and was never defrocked. He did the church a lot of harm, tho’.
 
Warrenton said:
Which of his views are you interested in seeing defended?
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I am not interested in seeing any defended. However, I have noticed an unfortunate tendency to defend certain aspects of church Church history here through some pretty elaborate semantic juggling acts.
For example; the church is not responsible for any excesses of the inquisition because those were perpetrated by civilian authorities. Of course this answer betrays a questionable understanding of medieval political institutions and the churches relationship with the state at that time. Or the church is is not culpable for any of the sexual abuse that has come to the publics attention because pederasty is not an official policy of the church. No ‘go forth and bugger the alter boys’ papal bull so the church can not be held accountable.

Some of that is a natural overreaction to perceived unfair attacks. It is certainly true the the inquisition, or a few bad priests, is not enough reason to dismiss the in general good the church has tried to do throughout its existence.

I thought Fr Coughlin was an interesting example because some time has passed, and his kind of antisemitism though more common then then we like to admit is now universally condemned. I was curious whether direct remarks were issued condemning that sort of thinking, or if the more tepid approach of simply objecting to an excessive involvement in secular politics in a general way.

And I will admit that because many of the posters here seem extremely conservative, I considered the possibility that some might be willing to defend many of the views he espoused.
 
When I asked "“which of his views you would be interested in seeing defended,” I did not mean it in the context you took it! Sorry! I had better written “Which views in particular would you like to discuss?”

Father Coughlin’s views regarding economic justice fall within a well established framework. Generally, this framework goes by the name “Distributism;” though FC was probably far over to the socialist side of the spectrum.

He perceived that for many, perhaps most people, in the 1930s, the economic playing field was most uneven. Given the 25% unemployment rate, and given the unprecedented number of rural foreclosures and the vast transfer of wealth to the banks that resulted, much of which was based on loans that had been substantially repaid, it is hard to quibble with his (and others) basic perception.

It is also hard to avoid the conclusion that FDR’s decisions regarding the Federal Reserve did, in fact, lead to a situation where almost all Americans’ wealth is no longer a factor of an agreed upon medium of exchange (specie - gold/silver/copper), but is rather a function of the agreement of large international banking concerns that are outside any actual democratic control. My personal view is that FDR knew the outcome when he reorganized the Treasury and that this was the “price” to pay for the political truce that enabled other aspects of the New Deal to take affect.

The degree to which this decision led to American involvement in WWII is open to debate. I think F C’s basic contention likely: international banking interests did not want Germany to win the war, because their assets would be seriously comprimised. The same interests were active in bringing about American intervention in World War I. Germany and Italy, via national socialism, did strike upon a solution to world depression that evaded the British Empire, France and the United States, and although the debt levels were small by present standards, no doubt the banks did not want to be taken hostage by other western governments.

The manner in which F C was ultimately silenced was unconstitutional, as was the way in which sedition was treated in both world wars. As recent events show, when the American people get even half of the story, and learn the deceit and special interest dealing that pave the way to war, they withdraw their support. WW2 was such a massive undertaking, and so many lives were staked on it that the government simply refused to brook any dissent from its official propaganda.

F C’s antisemitism is historically interesting. I read the other poster’s Wikipedia link, which gave (to my view) a muted treatment of the subject. Repeatedly blaming an entire group for social problems constitutes a serious challenge to that group, and the “send them back to Europe” comment bespeaks encouragement of active persecution, if not genocide. Some Muslims employ a similar tactic against Christians today.

That said, one wonders how much of the antisemitic criticism is based on true concern for the Jewish people, and how much is used as an expedient to curtail debate on economic reform. One is reminded of the former non-stop use by segregationists of Malcom X and the Black Panthers’ excesses both in rhetoric and (to a lesser extent) in deed. Their “outrage” was based far more on squelching the message of equal rights, and much less than on the violent methods advocated by MX.

Thank you for bringing up a very interesting topic, which has become something a footnote to American Catholicism, but deserves more attention!
 
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